(English) The Rise of International Tax Enforcement. Bloomberg April, 2012

Alan Winston Granwell
Bruce Zagaris

The Increasing Convergence Among Tax, Criminal, Money Laundering, and Evidence Gathering

Summary:
•Anti-tax haven bills will constantly be appended to appropriations legislation in this Session of Congress and in future ones.
•The lack of actual reciprocity by the US government, as opposed to the rhetoric, may well lead to dispute resolution proceedings with OECD and FATF.
•A global trend towards criminalization of tax compliance and enforcement will continue.
•In this regard, a continuing trend is the convergence of international tax enforcement cooperation with other areas of the law, including criminal law, money laundering, asset forfeiture, and international evidence gathering.
•Despite the growing specialization within tax law, tax enforcement will require increasing knowledge and use of other legal areas due to their increasing convergence.
•International organizations, such as the OECD, will continue their projects on the role of, and accountability for, banks and other financial intermediaries in tax compliance and enforcement.
•There will be a continuing convergence between tax enforcement and cooperation. Hence, the OECD will continue to emphasize exchange of information and cooperation in its tax transparency initiative.
•The emphasis will turn to automatic exchanges of information.
•Disagreements are likely to continue among OECD and developing countries about the proper financial architecture, not only in tax policy, but also financial regulation.
•If possible, the G8 countries will try to continue to centralize decision-making in elite informal groups (e.g., G20, OECD).
•Non-governmental organizations, such as Tax Justice Network (TJN), Global Integrity, Greenpeace, and others are all playing more important roles in international tax enforcement.
•Intermediaries and service providers must take stock of professional rules of conduct, reporting rules, and conflicts in jurisdiction rules to determine which laws apply and do their best to both advise their clients while adhering to the ever-dynamic international compliance and enforcement regimes.

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